Best vegan nail polish: 7 brands compared, from $10

Our pick is essie’s Original nail polish, $10 a bottle from a brand that calls itself vegan and prints the full ingredient list on its shade pages. If you want an outside vegan mark, buy OPI Nature Strong at $12.99. Skip Dazzle Dry if scent bothers you, because its vegan lacquer lists fragrance.

On essie’s site, Ballet Slippers, a sheer pale pink from the Original line, and Baby Carats, a chestnut shimmer from Gel by essie, carry the same full ingredient list. Same order, same glitter, down to synthetic fluorphlogopite and three kinds of borosilicate on a polish you can nearly see through. I’d like to say I spotted it on the first page. It was the second, and only because the pink was supposed to be sheer. By our reading, that list is one declaration for the whole range. US labeling rules allow exactly that for nail polish sold in shades, letting one brand share one ingredient list across similar products and set the color additives after “may contain”. For a vegan, essie’s range list is the useful kind, because its may-contain bracket names the colorants any shade in it may hold, and neither guanine nor carmine is among them. The three animal ingredients to scan for, and what guanine means on a US label, are in our guide to whether nail polish is vegan.

The seven polishes, and the catch in each

All seven were read on the makers’ own US pages in November 2026. Prices are what those pages showed on the day, and they move.

essie Original nail polish

Every essie shade page we opened says the same thing just above its ingredient list: essie is a vegan brand and contains no animal-derived ingredients. Ballet Slippers, which essie sells as its best-selling classic pale pink, is $10.00 on essie’s own store. That price, and a list you can read before you pay, are why it is our everyday pick. Nothing in the may-contain bracket is carmine or guanine, and shellac appears nowhere on the list.

If you want longer wear, the Gel by essie shades are $13.00, and essie’s FAQ on those pages says its longwear gel polishes are vegan, formulated without animal-derived ingredients. They are sold as a two-step system with their own top coat, which essie says to reapply on day 7.

The vegan statement is essie’s own, and the pages we read name no certifier behind it. If an independent vegan mark is your rule, essie fails that rule however clean its list looks.

OPI Nature Strong

This is the line to buy if you want someone other than the brand to vouch for it. OPI’s US page for a Nature Strong shade calls it vegan and footnotes the word with “No animal-derived ingredients or by-products”, and OPI’s UK blog says Nature Strong is certified by the Vegan Society, with its sunflower trademark. Berry Pickin’ Season, a red, is $12.99.

Lithothamnion calcareum extract, a red seaweed, sits a few places above diatomaceous earth on that list, which makes it the first nail polish label I’ve read that sounds like a walk on the beach. The color bracket holds no carmine and no guanine. OPI’s page also says a base coat isn’t needed, which is generous of a page that offers you its $11.50 Nature Strong base coat on the same page.

Scope is where it falls down. The vegan claim belongs to Nature Strong, and nothing we read extends it to OPI’s main range. Don’t buy an OPI bottle for the logo and assume the claim came with it. If the shade you love is in the classic line, it is outside everything on this page.

Sally Hansen Good. Kind. Pure.

Sally Hansen calls Good. Kind. Pure. its first plant-based, 16-free, 100% vegan nail polish, and the footnote that spells out the 16 puts animal-derived ingredients at number 11. The Ingredients tab prints two lists on one page, one for the color and one for the top coat, and the color’s may-contain bracket holds lakes, iron oxides and mica, with no guanine or carmine.

The two lists tell you how Sally Hansen expects you to wear it. The application steps end with one coat of Good. Kind. Pure. Top Coat. The vegan claim on that page covers that line, so if you finish with a top coat from another Sally Hansen range, check that bottle too. The description also talks up bamboo and marine algae, which reads like a smoothie menu and has nothing to do with the vegan question.

The page shows no price, only buying options at retailers, and it names no certifier. Buy it if you want the color and the top coat from one vegan line. Skip it if you want to know what you’ll pay before you leave the house.

Mooncat

Mooncat’s FAQ is as flat-out as a brand gets on this: it says it is 100% cruelty-free and vegan, and that it will “never test on animals or use any animal-derived ingredients”. Its shade pages print a list for the shade in the bottle rather than one for the range.

On Pearl Clutcher, the statement has to do the work. Mooncat describes it as a pearlescent white shimmer and says it won Allure’s Best of Beauty award for longwear nail polish; it is $17. Its printed list names titanium dioxide and four other color additives. It names no mica, no synthetic fluorphlogopite, no borosilicate and no guanine. We could not match the pearl to anything on that list. For a pearl, then, you are relying on the brand’s word, and here the word is unusually plain.

At $17, it is the second-highest of the prices we found, and the pages we read show no outside vegan mark. Don’t buy it as your first vegan bottle if price per manicure decides things for you; essie’s Ballet Slippers costs $7 less, by our arithmetic.

ILNP

Mega, an ILNP holographic polish, is $12.50. The list on that page comes in two parts, a Contains list and a May Contain bracket, and neither names guanine or carmine.

ILNP’s FAQ has a question about its vegan and cruelty-free policy. The answer says ILNP does not test on animals, and that it makes “a conscious effort to avoid purchasing animal/insect derived materials” such as carmine and guanine. The answer to a question with vegan in it never uses the word. An effort is a fine thing to make, and it is still not a promise. The lists we read name nothing animal-derived; the written policy is the softest of the seven. Pick another brand if you want a promise in writing more than you want a clean list.

Holo Taco

Holo Taco’s about page says its polishes are “10-free*, vegan, cruelty-free and made in the USA”. The shade page we read prints its full ingredient list. Sugar Dust Taco, a glitter topper, is $14.50 for 12 mL, and its list holds aluminum powder and violet 2 for color and no animal-derived name.

Sugar Dust Taco is made to go over another color, and the page says a top coat is needed to seal it in. So it is the second bottle of a manicure, sometimes the third. As an only bottle it makes no sense, and the real price of the manicure includes the base color and the top coat.

Dazzle Dry

Dazzle Dry’s home page says its formulas are vegan, made without animal-derived ingredients, and never tested on animals. The lacquer skips nitrocellulose, the film former in every other list here, and uses cellulose acetate butyrate instead. Foxtrot is $22 for a full-size bottle, the highest price we found.

The $22 pays for one part of a system. The steps on the Foxtrot page are prep, two coats of Dazzle Dry’s base coat, two coats of lacquer and one of its top coat, and the home page frames the 7-plus days of wear as what you get when you use it as a system. The main list on the same page ends with fragrance. Fragrance on a nail polish label was a new one for me. It is vegan by the brand’s own statement. Leave it on the shelf if scent bothers you or if you only want to buy one bottle.

Side by side

Everything below is from the makers’ own US pages, November 2026.

Polish	Vegan, per the maker	Outside vegan mark	Full list on the page	Price when read
essie Original	Yes, vegan brand	None named	Yes, one list for the range	$10.00
OPI Nature Strong	Yes, no animal-derived ingredients or by-products	Vegan Society, per OPI UK	Yes	$12.99
Sally Hansen Good. Kind. Pure.	Yes, “100% vegan”	None named	Yes, color and top coat	Not shown
Mooncat	Yes, brand-wide	None named	Yes, per shade	$17
ILNP	Policy says “conscious effort”	None named	Yes, contains and may contain	$12.50
Holo Taco	Yes, brand-wide	None named	Yes, per shade	$14.50 for 12 mL
Dazzle Dry	Yes, all formulas	None named	Yes, lists fragrance	$22

Three kinds of list, and what each one proves

The first kind ends in a bracket of colors after “may contain” or “+/-“, as the lists from essie, OPI, Sally Hansen, ILNP and Dazzle Dry do. A bracket like that is how one list can cover many shades under the rule above, and on essie’s site it plainly does. On those brands, read the bracket first. Guanine shows up there as CI 75170, and on a US label the color additive guanine is defined as crystalline material obtained from fish scales. Carmine, the red made from cochineal insects, is the other name to look for. On essie’s range list, a bracket without either covers every shade that shares the list.

The second kind is the shade list, like the ones on the Mooncat and Holo Taco pages we read. It is shorter and specific to the bottle, so it can tell you something about that one shade and nothing about its neighbors. When a list like that has nothing in it that could make the finish you are looking at, as with Pearl Clutcher, the list is not doing the work; the brand’s statement is.

The third kind is no list at all. Then the vegan word on the front is the whole of your evidence, and the only question left is whose word it is. OPI’s sunflower comes from a scheme whose standards, OPI says, it had to meet. Every other vegan claim in this roundup is the brand speaking for itself, which can be perfectly true and is still a different kind of evidence. Shellac, the resin from the lac insect, is the other name worth knowing on a nail shelf, and our page on why shellac isn’t vegan covers where it turns up.

Which one to buy

For an everyday bottle you can check before you pay, buy essie Original. If an outside vegan mark is your rule, buy OPI Nature Strong, and stay inside that line. If you want holo, ILNP’s lists are clean and its written policy is not, so decide which of those you trust more. The rest of the makeup bag works the same way, and our list of vegan drugstore makeup brands goes through it brand by brand.